Backup Exec was unable to prepare Microsoft Active Directory resources for Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) operations (V-79-57344-38747)

Issue

Backup Exec Server 16 (V-Ray Edition), running on Windows Server 2008R2 logs following warning after backing up Windows Server 2016 Domain Controller:

V-79-57344-38747 - Backup Exec was unable to prepare Microsoft Active Directory resources for Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) operations. Therefore you will be unable to perform GRT-enabled restores of Microsoft Active Directory data from this backup.

Enable Anonymous Relay on Exchange 2016

• Open Exchange Admin Center and Navigate to Mail Flow > Receive Connectors
• Create a new Receive Connector with following settings:
  • Role: Fontend Transport
  • Type: Custom
    

Backup live data using PowerShell, DiskShadow, and RoboCopy

Robocopy is my go-to tool for quick file-level backups. Unfortunately it doesn't deal well with locked files (live databases, pst files, etc.). In those instances I deploy another great tool - DiskShadow that allows to tap into functionality of Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). 

This is the way it works:

• diskshadow creates a shadow copy of a volume and then mounts it as a normal physical drive.
• robocopy then does its job by copying data from that mounted virtual drive without having to worry about locked files.
• Once copying is done dishshadow deletes the shadow copy and dismounts the drive.
• PoweShell sends notification and logs to your email.

Let's start:

• We'll need to create 4 files:
  • diskshadow_backup.conf - Main diskshadow backup file.
  • diskshadow_delete_x.conf - Used only to delete abandoned X: drive.
  • robocopy_backup.cmd - robocopy backup script.
  • run_backup.ps1 - PowerShell script to combine everything and then send logs via email. Executed manually or via scheduled task.

Incorrect time on a Domain Controller running inside Hyper-V VM

Computer clocks withing whole domain run 5-6 minutes behind. Normally, authoritative time source for the whole domain is a Domain Controller (DC) that holds PDC Emulator FSMO role in the forest root domain. You can find which DC holds this role by running: netdom /query fsmo. Fixing time issues on this machine normally fixes it for the rest of the domain.

The DC in question was configured to receive time from an Internet NTP time source. However, running w32tm /query /source was returning: VM IC Time Synchronization Provider. This means the DC was receiving time from its Hyper-V Host instead of NTP Internet Time source. To resolve this, I went to Hyper-V VM Settings > Integration Services and disabled Time Synchronisation.